Special Practical Workshops
(for enquiries email yunping@bic.nus.edu.sg and tinwee@bic.nus.edu.sg)
(Note that these special practical half/one-day workshops will be
set up upon request by sufficient numbers of students)
Common Questions and problems for starting up the project proposal abstract
I have submitted an outline of my supervisor's research and I have stated that I would like to help build a website for him
CRITIQUE:
This is too vague to start with. Tip: have you keyed in all the keywords of
your supervisor's research and used something like www.google.com or
www.altavista.com or www.yahoo.com or www.hotbot.com or www.lycos.com
to search for anything out there on the internet?
My supervisor's research cannot be helped by Bioinformatics because it is not a molecular biololgy subject area, and we don't do any molecular biology or
gene cloning
CRITIQUE:
Every area in the life sciences are currently being transformed by bioinformatics and the Internet. Just research field at the barest minimum must have
bibliographic information. This immediately constitutes one quick starting
point for your bioinformatics project. Secondly, doing the search for
information on the Internet immediately pulls up tons of information
and hyperlinks. Again, this constitutes another quick start point to
create a mini-Yahoo directory for all Network Accessible information.
From that start point, you will begin to learn how other people have
already made a start to bioinformatise their research work. In almost
90% of cases, other people have already made a start.
I am stuck. I am waiting for my supervisor to tell me in what
way bioinformatics can help the research. Can I delay till I am told
what to do before I write the proposal abstract outlining my intended
course of action?
CRITIQUE:
The key problem you have is the ability to independently take
a topic, any topic and define the problem, and figure out how to
solve it by proposing a course of action. This is partly what
the bioinformatics project is trying to get you to learn: how
to be independent information agents living in a knowledge age,
adding value to the knowledge economy. There is no way that
the future will sustain anyone who needs detailed instructions first
before he or she can start work. There is no more excuse such as
"I don't know what to do". The whole wide world of information
and people putting up information online, is out there at your
reach of your fingertips within seconds. Learning how to get
at this information and process it into knowledge about what to
do, is the survival kit for tomorrow's citizen. Failure to acquire
this skill will guarantee your dinosaurial demise as an
efficient knowledge worker.
I cannot publish data on my research and put it on a
public website.
CRITIQUE
You should not do it. Otherwise, your results may not
be publishable as paper in a journal.
There is no need for you to put up data of your project.
Your job is to make recommendations on how bioinformatics
can help your research lab. And the objective of the project
is for you to propose ideas on how bioinformatics can help
your supervisor's lab in their research in a report which
you use a website to convey, and to build a website containing
some of the things you have recommended.
Therefore, your job is NOT to publish your data through the website
but to build the basis for the bioinformatisation of your
supervisor's lab.
I am sorry I can't or don't know how to use fancy backgrounds,
attractive images
Feedback
Again, the aim is not to build a nice looking website, but the
substance and content. Building nice bioinformatics website is
part of the subject of BM1106, a first year course module, not
the honours course.
I have used Frontpage (or other software) and tested all the
image and hyperlinks to other files I have constructed but after
uploading, all the images do not appear, and the hyperlinks to
my uploaded files don't work. Help!
SOLUTION
This is a common problem with a lack of understanding by
students on hyperlinks.
Short Answer: Copy all files including html and image files
into the same directory as the current page you are editing
using Frontpage first, before hyperlinking them.
Long Answer: Your hyperlinks are made to files in other directories
in your PC when you were constructing the webpage. Consequently,
all the directory paths linking to these files have to go
into the hyperlinks embedded in the text. When you transfer the
html file to the server, as well as the rest of the hyperlinked
files, you should remove these directory paths. Typically, this
has to be done manually. The easiest solution is to bring all
the files into the same directory before you compose your
html file, and before you make those hyperlinks, and when done,
don't forget to upload all the files in that directory.
If you are a web administrator, or webmaster, then you
will have more control over the various directories you wish
to create, and the subdirectories etc. This is possible using
the uploading system, but not very easy to do.